There it was.
Of course they knew about the money. Because it was their money. Briggs and Salcedo. Russell James must have been working for them somehow. And they were working for somebody else. Somebody higher up the ladder.
Gwen looked at Worth. He could see the question in her eyes. What is he talking about?
He looked at Briggs and Salcedo, again wondering how far ahead they really were.
They were up on Sondra. They’d been inside his house. It wouldn’t take much for them to figure Junk Monkey Scrap and Salvage into the equation, if they hadn’t done that already. Worth thought of the effortless manner in which Ray Salcedo had procured the information he needed from Detective Kenna.
He put his arm around Gwen’s waist like they were Bonnie and Clyde. “I guess you win.”
Tony Briggs smiled.
22
Rita missed her connection in Denver and didn’t get home until late Monday night.
Vince waited up for her at the kitchen table, reading the paper and sipping Jim Beam. She came up the back stairs with her suitcase and a long sigh that said she was happy to be home.
“Brrr.”
Vince didn’t turn. “Told you to pack a coat.”
“You don’t need coats in the desert.”
She left the suitcase at the top of the steps. Twice a year she visited her mother, two weeks at a time, and she’d never packed more than the one small suitcase. A few changes of clothes and a sketch pad or two. I’m coming right back, she always said.
She came up behind his shoulder, burrowed a hand into his hair, and scratched the back of his head like a puppy. “Hey, babe.”
Vince scraped his chair back and swatted her rear.
“Let’s get you warmed up,” he said.
Rita had gone gray early. She had a wild springy mass of hair, and by her forty-third birthday, every strand of it had gone the color of stone. But where Vince had put on sixty pounds over the years, at fifty-one, Reet still had the body of a thirty-year-old marathon runner. Slim and sinewy.
She took care of herself first, making the same sighing sound as she’d made walking in the door. Home sweet home.
Just as Vince was about to let himself go, she stopped at the very top. The last possible inch. She held herself there, grabbed two tight handfuls of his chest hair, and pinched her knees up under his ribs.
“I thought you weren’t going to drink while I was gone.”
“Jesus,” he said. “Come on.”
“Well?”
He coughed out a breath. “I got lonesome.”
She screwed up her mouth in the moonlight and gave a sharp tug with her fists. It hurt about as much as she’d wanted it to. Then she slid down slowly, rocking her hips, squeezing gently as she lowered herself.
That was all it took.
It always had been. Twelve years ago, Rita had waited for Vince under a blooming crabapple tree in the parking lot of the state penitentiary. She’d smiled when they let him go at the gate, snuggled in close as they’d walked back to the car. Just before they got in, she’d kissed him on the cheek and whispered, This is the last time.
That was the day he’d stopped all the bullshit and embraced the lucky truth: Rita could do him in whenever she decided it was time.
They lay around together in the bed for a while. Eventually, she propped up on an elbow. “Mom says hi.”
He chuckled. “Someone says hello to you, too.”
“Uh-huh.” She reached under the covers, gave him a squeeze.
“Guess again.”
“I’m too sleepy.” She yawned and stretched. “Who’d you see?”
“Matty.”
She leaned back. “Your brother?”
“Day before yesterday,” he said.
“You went back?”
“Didn’t go anywhere. He came out here.”
“I’ll be darned.” She seemed pleased by the news. “It’s about time you two started keeping in touch. How is he?”
“Same as us,” Vince said.
“Happy?” She grinned. “Broke?”
“Older.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Vince put a hand behind his head. He probably should have taken a shower before she’d gotten home. “Sondra’s pregnant.”
“Really.”
“Isn’t his.”
Rita slapped his chest. “That’s not funny.”
“Didn’t say it was.”
“Poor Matthew.” Rita stayed quiet a moment, then said, “You know, at your mother’s funeral, he was the only one in your family who came over and talked with us.”
Vince knew. It wasn’t the first time she’d brought it up. Next she’d remind him that Matty also had been the only other person standing with her under the crabapple tree that day at the pen.
The stupid shit.
Rita seemed to get an idea. Her voice grew concerned. “Is it your dad?”
“What about him?”
“Oh. Good.” She planted her elbow in the pillow and rested her head on her hand. “I was just thinking, for Matthew to come all the way out here…”
“Nah,” Vince said. “Old bastard’s still alive far as I know.”
“So what was the occasion?”
Vince shrugged. “Brought me a stolen car with a dead guy in the trunk. We took the body down to the burn shed. Spent today getting rid of the car. I was gonna chop it yesterday, but then we found a whole shitload of cash hidden inside.”
He waited through another yawn.
“My,” Rita said. She reached across him, grabbed her little granny-style bifocals from the nightstand, and perched them on her nose. “Sounds like you two had a nice time. I’m going to make tea.”
Vince watched her pad across the cold floor, barefoot and naked, scrubbing her hair with her fingers as she moved. Soon he heard clattering in the kitchen. Cupboard doors, the pot rack. The sound of the faucet at the sink.
Of course she hadn’t believed him. Who the hell would?
He lay there and looked at the shadows on ceiling, wondering how he was going to bring himself to do it. How he would go to the closet, pull out the old ratty duffel bag he hadn’t used in years, and show her the money he’d stowed there.
Two hundred and sixty-four thousand dollars. They’d counted it out together, him and Matt, sorting the soft wrinkled bills into loose stacks. It was street money, on its way to be laundered somewhere. Drugs, guns, skin, bets, fake IDs for all they knew.
As soon as they’d finished, Matty had told him to burn it. Same as everything else. The guy had disappeared; his money had to disappear with him. No leftovers.
Standing there, half tanked, looking at all that grubby dough in one big pile, Vince had agreed. They’d scooped the bills into a Hefty bag and drove it all down to the burn shed together.
He’d sobered up on the way.
Because disappearing some dead asshole was one thing. Butchering the car was another. Both had made Vince sick to his stomach, but for some goddamned reason, for Matthew, he’d been able to do it.
Ash-canning two hundred and sixty-four thousand dollars in green money? That was something else.
They lived in the goddamned hills, him and Rita. Between the yard business and what Reet brought in every so often on a public art comission, or selling her crazy scrap-metal lawn ornaments, they could pay everything they owed and live on the leftovers when they got old.
He’d gotten behind on the trash while she’d been gone. Thing was, down in the shed, there was a whole pile of Hefty sacks waiting to be burned. Every one of them looked more or less the same.